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Reading Bhikkhu Bodhi’s wonderful text about the Noble Eightfold Path, I had to sit for a while with his discussion of the Four Noble Truths. Now, I have been able to rattle these off from memory for quite some time: (1) There is suffering; (2) There is an origin to suffering; (3) There is an end to suffering; (4) There is a path to follow to the end of suffering. That’s my own version. You’ll see that these four are represented a little differently in every text you read, but at the heart of each one is the same basic idea: exists, begins, ends, path.

As I wrote yesterday, Bhikkhu Bodhi tells us that there are two levels of understanding the Four Noble Truths. The second, more advanced level is something that need not concern us at the beginning of our practice — it will come to us with time. The…